… SSK remains the best option for 2027
By Prince Friday Ogungbemi
Why the sudden hatred? Why is this gang up against Senator Sunday Karimi? Why the deceitful presentation of the facts? It is very obvious that I cannot present answers to the above questions, because everyone has his or her personal reasons for taking their positions or stance.
What I do know and understand is that the reasons are mostly for personal interests and not in the collective interests of the people, the communities or Kogi West Senatorial District.
Please let us all be realistic, the people who have all come together to gang up against Senator Sunday Karimi’s second term ambition today would have at one time or another be with him planning projects, programs and articulating things together for the success of his assignment.
What comes to my mind therefore is the book of Ecclesiastes 3:1-10, which says:-
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?
I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.
I therefore ask, is this Sunday Karimi’s season of hate, war, and cast away? It is equally a question that I cannot provide answers for.
Similarly, this takes my mind to the famous funeral speech made by Mark Antony in the play ‘Julius Caesar’ by William Shakespeare in Act III, scene II, on the nature of man. The speech lays bare the fragility of the human mind, and how easily it can be swayed against its own.
In the play, Brutus brands Julius Caesar as “ambitious,” not as truth, but as a convenient pretext to justify a calculated assassination..
Betrayal now lurks everywhere, among friends, acquaintances, colleagues, relatives, even brothers. So, who will rise as our Mark Antony to tell our story as it truly is, armed with facts, not falsehoods? Recall the famous speech:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
These poetic phases did Mark Antony use to arouse the minds of the Roman citizens, to remind them how Caesar had shown love to them in the past, yet his accusers said he was ambitious.
Every revolution begins by condemning the last, only to outdo it in failure and become even worse than what it replaced.
Let’s be clear about something here; many of those now opposing Senator Sunday Karimi’s second-term bid share a common past, one defined by aligned interests and familiar alliances robed in personal aggrandizement.
Perhaps their discontent stems from unmet personal expectations rather than any objective assessment of his performance. As a result, they resort to blackmail, judging him not by what he has delivered to their communities, Local Government Areas, or districts, but by what he did not deliver to them individually. In essence, their actions are driven by personal interests, not the collective good.
Meanwhile, the current wave of antagonism appears to stem from personal grudges against Senator Sunday Karimi. Notably, the scale of his accomplishments in Yagba West Local Government Area, and across the wider Kogi West Senatorial District, within just two years and ten months surpasses what was recorded by successive Yagba West Local Government Councils over the past decade, yet it did not provoke the kind of outrage being witnessed today..
What offences has Senator Sunday Karimi committed to warrant sustained attacks, particularly from some elements within Yagba West LGA who now position themselves as the leading opposition? One must also ask: during the 16 years our Ijumu brothers represented Kogi West in the Senate, what tangible gains accrued to the people of Yagba West, and indeed the Kogi West Senatorial District as a whole?
Today our best option is to return Senator Sunday Karimi back to the Senate in 2027 and encourage him to do more, looking at the prevailing circumstances at this time.
It is time, as a people, to refocus our priorities and channel our collective energies and resources toward a cause that will secure our political liberation and break the chains of long-standing marginalization.
– Prince Friday Ogungbemi writes from Lokoja.
